


Wild Child

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, F/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spells she never learned. Written in October 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Child

She looks older, and more beautiful, and the lines of her face, around her eyes and mouth show just how long it's been since Merlin last saw her. She smiles and cocks her head to one side at the sight of him, like a little bird, something about her hollowed-bone and feathers, pure sky.

Merlin wonders, does he know how to talk to her anymore, and has he forgotten the sound of her voice, and she his?

`Your king needs you,´ is what he said in the end, looking over his shoulder. He's spent too long in Camelot and his warm, solid walls. The woods, thick and unpredictable, scare him now.

Morgana nods and takes his hand, leads him deep into the forest, and Merlin realizes how messy her dark hair is and how there's dirty under her fingernails. She smells of crushed flowers and rotten leaves and _power_.

`I heard them coming from the north,´ she says, crouching down and pressing her palm against the ground.

`Camelot needs you,´ he says.

(he doesn't say, _you have been away too long_)

`Will you come?´ he asks.

(he doesn't say, _you are powerful_)

She leads him to the riverside and sunlight finds them with their fingers entwined. She kisses him quickly, lightly, like fluttering animals, barely a brush of lips. Surprised by her own gesture Morgana puts one fingertip against her lip, _oh_, trying to retrace what it is that she did just now.

`_You_ are powerful,´ she tells Merlin.

She takes his hand and lifts it to her mouth, kisses the knuckles, the joint of his fingers, his palm. She presses his hand against her face, smelling it, caressing it, like trying to engrave the smell, shape and feel of it on her mind, like a wild animal claiming what's hers.

(he doesn't say, _I'm not even surprised you can hear me_)

`Show me,´ she says, running her tongue along Merlin's thumb, her eyes fixed on the river behind them, the water leaping like joy, like Morgana's heart at the starlight-moment where magic meets magic and Merlin's skin meets her.

`What?´

_What you have learned without me. Your new spells. The ones you made up, playing, the ones you wanted to tell me and I was not there._ She pushes him, gently, to the ground – the ground is damp grass and mud and scent of things that are alive. It smells like Morgana. Like a wild child, she has spent too long in the woods. She looks at Merlin with a sense of possession no human should have.

(Merlin does not say, _I've missed you_)

`Show me how powerful you've become without me,´ and there are traces of the girl he knew in that voice, coarse from unused but the regal tones of a palace remembered, the ward of a king for a moment recovered and not a wild girl, a witch living in the woods. Her clothes are in rags and forest-dirty and they almost fall apart in Merlin's hands. She ravages his mouth and presses her breasts against his chest and he knows she's become a predator like the beasts among which she lives. He does not care. He lets himself be devastated by her hands, her long fingernails, the pressure of her thighs, he lets himself be torn apart.

Merlin shows her.

A spell to make the river run against its course. A spell to rise the water and flood the fields.

She does not know the words he is saying; they did not exist before he said them. She runs her fingers over his mouth, trying to capture the sounds. Merlin pushes her hair back, away from her face and remembers how much he loves the darkness of her, the very weight of her.

The water has reached them, their feet, their shoulders wet. The river would soon swallow them, but Merlin can hold the universe still with the tip of his tongue. Morgana has forgotten most human words but not his name. The water, around them, dancing with them.


End file.
